Blue Marble Microinsurance – a consortium of nine companies including Zurich, AIG, Aspen, and Hamilton – has announced a deal with The United Nations World Food Programme that will see it provide weather index insurance solutions for the organisation across Africa.
Blue Marble will provide smallholder farmers with an offering that is customisable to soil types, crops, seed varieties and farming practices.
By leveraging satellite technology the company is able to monitor parameters that trigger payouts, eliminating the need for high cost in-field assessment.
It’s hoped that by providing helpful, affordable insurance solutions Blue Marble and WFP will be able to improve financial security to smallholder farmers.
“We are excited to expand our partnership with WFP across Africa building on the work we have done in Zimbabwe and our joint commitment to increase the resilience of smallholder farmers to climate risk”, said Jaime de Piniés, Head of Africa at Blue Marble.
Lorenzo Bosi, Resilience and Climate Change Coordinator for WFP Zimbabwe, added, “Working with a dynamic company such as Blue Marble will allow WFP to further scale up and refine innovative climate risk solutions for food insecure and vulnerable people, leveraging on private sector expertise.”
